1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a parts supply hopper operatively associated with a parts feeder device for supplying the latter with small parts or articles at predetermined rates.
2. Prior Art
There are known many different types of parts feeders, a typical example of which is a vibratory type bowl feeder adapted to receive randomly positioned articles from a hopper and deliver properly oriented articles one at a time through a supply chute to a processing station on an automatic assembly production line such as in a slide fastener manufacturing factory.
The bowl parts feeder receives predetermined amounts of articles manually at such a time point and such a frequency as seen fit by the operator, or alternatively automatically from a suitable parts hopper such as that disclosed for example in Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open Publication 60-122719.
The prior art hopper device comprises a rotary drum having a discharge outlet adjacent to its upper peripheral edge and rotatably supported on rollers driven by two separate motors through a pair of movable gears. The drum is provided along its inner wall surface with a helically shaped guide track adapted to transfer articles from the bottom floor of the drum upwardly towards the upper edge thereof until the articles overflow and fall by own gravity into a parts feeder. Such drum hopper is structurally complicated and bulky, and has a further drawback in that due to a large head (namely, the distance between the upper edge of the drum hopper in operative position and the bottom wall surface of the vibratory parts feeder) the supply of articles from the hopper is apt to drop onto random aspects in the feeder and at such a high speed that individual articles would impinge upon one another or bounce back from the drum floor to strike and disturb the stream of oriented articles in the discharge chute, or would often even fly out of the bowl.